Kiev, p.22
Kiev, page 22
“AND OLD KIEV PLAYS CARDS”
In his study of Soviet urban leisure culture, John Bushnell argues that urban leisure activities derive largely from informal personal interaction among peasant villagers: “leisure preferences of today are determined less by the current condition of society than by the preferences of yesterday.” Traditional urban leisure activities have been characterized mainly by obshchenie (visiting friends) and by progulka (strolling, hanging out, playing cards, and the like).54 At midcentury Kievans strolled and picnicked, played cards, and hung out.
Gambling remained a popular passion throughout the entire period under study. The high-stakes games run by Polish magnates at fair time in the nineteenth century’s early decades have already been described. Card games were a constant at the Noblemen’s and Merchants’ Clubs, and local officials continued to participate despite an 1879 ban by the Ministry of the Interior on macao and other popular games of chance. Looking back at the 1880s, when the Noblemen’s Club celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, Iaron observed that the club had served mainly as a place for the city’s elite to gamble at cards. In 1887 proceeds from card games and fines reached fifty thousand rubles, some of which went to charity. (Morals remained “patriarchal” [traditional], but “no one was shocked” when card players or bowlers at the German skittles alley took off their coats, we are told.)55
Lotteries reinforced the public’s passion for gambling, but they were also an important means of raising money for human needs. At the Merchants’ Club lotteries sometimes ran until eleven o’clock at night. They drew huge crowds and helped finance charities such as day-care centers for the poor, which neither Kiev’s city council nor the provincial zemstvo had been willing to fund. In 1911 the Merchants’ Club raised sixteen thousand rubles in lottery revenue; in 1912, however, lotteries with jackpots of more than fifteen hundred rubles were declared illegal.56
Of course, gambling and lotteries have been popular forms of entertainment in many cultures. They helped pay the colonial American soldiers who fought for independence against the British. Gunther Barth has written of nineteenth-century America: “Gambling appealed to some city written of nineteenth-century America: “Gambling appealed to some city people as a mark of gentility, or struck others as an exciting diversion from everyday problems. For some, it also affirmed a deep-seated suspicion about the inclination of heterogenous people to transgress the morality of the lawmakers.”57 This analysis could easily apply to imperial Kiev as well, particularly to the flamboyant Poles. Recalling how hard it was to leave the Contract Fair, one visitor observed: “One could say that Warsaw dances, Cracow prays, Lvov falls in love, Vilna goes hunting, and old Kiev plays cards.”58
The famous high-stakes card games that accompanied the fair probably disappeared as the fair itself waned in importance, but games of chance continued to be popular well into the twentieth century. Billiards and dominoes for stakes were commonly played in restaurants and cafés. Card games ran constantly in the city’s three flea markets, and many a cardsharp made a living fleecing peasants. Unskilled laborers waiting for work whiled away their time gambling. Even children played games of chance. After 1905 the right to authorize the opening of new clubs was transferred from the Ministry of the Interior to provincial officials, and the number of new clubs, with names such as Bicycle Club, Sportsmen’s Club, and Artists’ Club, proliferated. Many were run by card sharks and soon closed down.59
HANGING OUT IN KIEV
For many Kievans recreational life remained centered in the home, and some put red lights in their windows to signal that friends were welcome to drop in. Of the public places, the streets, particularly the great streets such as the Khreshchatyk, the bazaars, the parks and woods, the churches, and the taverns all were important centers of social interaction.
Boating was popular as well. In the mid-1850s two Belgian-built steamers, part of a fleet of twelve Polish-owned steamers on the Dnipro, came regularly to Kiev. The river produced extra income too, as children and adults made baskets from the willow thickets along its banks for sale in local markets, a skill first taught to Kievans by a religious pilgrim in the 1840s. Troops from Kiev’s garrison practiced building pontoon bridges across the Dnipro, and this exercise, as well as nighttime artillery practice and the detonation of explosives, often drew big crowds. In winter Kiev had plenty of water and hills for skating and sledding.
As much as anything else, however, strolling dominated Kiev’s recreational scene. The writers Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852) and Nikolai Leskov (1831–1895), both of whom lived in the city for a time, were among those who enjoyed strolling among its monuments and vistas. Visiting dignitar ies—for example, those who came in 1888 for the great celebration of the Nine Hundredth Anniversary of Russia’s Christianization—were taken for strolls along the Dnipro or the canal that cut through Podil. Another favorite spot for strollers was aristocratic Lypky, named for the stately linden trees that surrounded the homes of the affluent who lived there. The Tsar’s Garden and Vineyard, the origins of which went back to the seventeenth century, were located in Lypky. Early in the nineteenth century, a military band played almost daily in good weather, attracting great crowds to the garden. Poles promenaded as a way of showing off. “May promenades” were held without fail on the first, fifteenth, and thirtieth of the month. Each gymnasium class had its own banner that was unfurled during festival days.60 Parents took these promenades very seriously, for they were one way of displaying an educated son.
The orderliness of Bibikov’s Kiev reinforced the popularity of this diversion, and perhaps the rudeness of the carters and haulers, notorious even at midcentury, helped convince people that walking was enjoyable. Upon visiting the city in 1851, Nicholas I decreed that Lypky should be maintained in the best possible fashion, and a city orangery was created there. Regrettably, a few decades later the city council allowed most of the plants to be sold off by the family in charge of maintaining it.
Strolling was a popular diversion for the entire population and served as a way for groups of young people to look over members of the opposite sex. On summer evenings, Ikonnikov recalls, “the entire beau monde of Kiev” strolled through the Tsar’s Garden. Nationalities mixed. One could hear Russian and Polish, French and German, catch a glimpse of the infamous man who had killed the poet Lermontov in a duel, or of the coveted beauties of high society. In the mornings one could enjoy the mineral waters of the garden to the tunes of an outdoor orchestra.61 The Russian word for strolling (gulian’e) and its Ukrainian equivalent (huliannia) also can mean merriment or revelry, and particularly on holidays strolling was punctuated with merrymaking and group dancing, usually in a circle and called khorovod in Russian, khorovid in Ukrainian. Such events enabled young men and women to interact. Sometimes young women sat on benches, strategically placed at yard gates, hoping to be noticed by passersby.62
Strollers in Kiev had some complaints. If one got caught in the rain, it was impossible to get a carriage, and, in any case, sedans quickly filled up with water. Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kharkiv, and Riga regulated their carters (izvozchiki), it was said, but not Kiev, where horses were driven at breakneck speed and allowed to make sharp right-hand turns without slowing down.63 Missing in Kiev was the institution of the pol’za (“facility”), a place where women could freshen up, make sanitary changes, and even hire a seamstress to sew a torn dress. Noting the appearance of these conveniences in such cities as Samara, Saratov, and Ekaterinburg, a “well-traveled woman” suggested in one Kiev newspaper that here was an opportunity awaiting local entrepreneurs. The pol’za was undoubtedly intended to assist middle- and upper-class women out on the streets. Poor women, usually on their own and looking for work, often slept in courtyards or open fields and devised their own means of protection “from being dragged off.” Rows of women tied themselves together with a long rope that was tied to a post or tree. This custom was said to be especially prominent in the south, where women were “dead tired after working sixteen-hour days.”64
19. Street scene from nineteenth-century Kiev showing a well-dressed, upper-class woman (left) and a barefoot milk peddler.
The Khreshchatyk was admired throughout the south. Kerosene street lamps were added in 1869. (The practice of carrying burning splinters had previously been banned because of the fire hazard.) Gaslights were installed in 1872, electric streetlights around 1900. By 1904 Kiev had about one thousand streetlights.65 In winter the Khreshchatyk was completely deserted by evening, but in warm weather working-class people in their finest attire assembled in the evenings and on Sundays to stroll along its wide sidewalks. Hryhorev remembers watching the young village girls employed in the city’s cigarette factories deny to passersby that they actually worked with tobacco (which was considered a dirty and demeaning job), and describes the soldiers out for a stroll who had to stand at attention when officers appeared.66 Strolls along the Khreshchatyk afforded Kievans the chance to window-shop in what had become the city’s high-fashion shopping district. As in the capitals, a fashion calendar had evolved in Kiev, its “seasons” no longer dependent upon the fairs.67 Residents of Kharkiv complained that their city “did not have a single good broad boulevard similar to the Kreshchatik in Kiev, the Esplanade in Helsingfors [Helsinki], Bolshaia dvorianskaia in Voronezh, or the incomparable Ujazdowskie Allei, the best place to stroll in all of Warsaw.”68
20. Police patrol a square in the center of town, ca. 1900. Note that the sign at the corner advertising the chocolate shop is in Russian and French.
Fittingly, strolling became a metaphor for aimlessness and a lack of public-mindedness. During the bitter month of November 1905, physicians in Kiev were accused “of preferring to stroll in green fields than to take a stand against government arbitrariness.”69
“DEBAUCHERY AND CRIME OF ALL KINDS”
In contrast to the stately and orderly Khreshchatyk was the scene at Kiev’s crowded bazaars. On Sunday afternoons at the Alexander Bazaar, in addition to pickpockets, cardsharps, Gypsies, and charlatans, the market was flooded with chickens and geese, “suspicious-looking” fish byproducts, old books, clothing, and consumer items of every kind, even grand pianos. Once a month unclaimed railway freight was sold. Anyone could trade without worrying about a permit or paying taxes on the transactions. The Pole Maria Kozieradzka remembers in particular the cranberries and the contraband goods, the Turks selling halva (sweetened sesame cakes), and the arrival in August of the Tatars on camels and in huge coaches filled with grapes and wine.70 Halytsky Bazaar, with everything from large stores to countless street vendors, was another popular hangout. With its rows of stands and carts offering a variety of inexpensive foods, it was an especially popular place to eat. It was also called Jewish Bazaar, or Evbaz (from Evreiskii bazar) for short. Still today, older Kievans from the neighborhood will say, “Ia Evbazivs’ky” (I’m from the Evbaz).
Strolling and other outdoor activities could flourish only in a safe environment, and nineteenth-century Kiev appears to have been safe, at least in terms of violent crime. Murder, for instance, was uncommon. If official data are to be believed, in the 1840s Kiev averaged only four murders per year (about one per 12,500 inhabitants), compared with an average of about six yearly suicides, seventeen drownings, twenty deaths from “fits” associated with illnesses, and three from “intemperance.”71 In 1901 murder was still uncommon in Kiev (pop. 281,000). That year six murders were recorded, about one per 47,000 inhabitants. From this point the number of murders increased sharply, although the number of murders per inhabitant did not significantly exceed that registered in the “safe” 1840s. Officially, in 1902 Kiev recorded thirteen murders; in 1906 (pop. 340,000), twenty-two, or one per 15,500 residents. In 1913, in the sprawling metropolis of 626,000, there were forty-three murders, or one per 14,500 inhabitants.72
In the first decade of the twentieth century, Kiev’s press published numerous complaints about street crime, homeless boys, “bazaar ruffians,” and the generally bad manners of the public. In 1903 a Kievskoe slovo columnist reported that people feared visiting Vladimir Hill and the Tsar’s Garden in the evenings because the absence of police and a general lack of care had turned these parks into “sanctuaries for debauchery and crime of all kinds.” “Never in Kiev has there been so much shameless, impertinent behavior … so many wayward, dissolute people.”73 Angrily, a columnist from Kievskaia gazeta contended that Kiev had more “itinerant, tattered street-children” than any other imperial city. Denied educational opportunity, they became thieves and pickpockets.74
Similar complaints were registered elsewhere. St. Petersburg newspapers complained of “boundless insolence” and harassment on the streets. Odesskie novosti (Odessa news) blamed a pogrom in Yalta on “a small group of vagabonds and rogues who were helped by hundreds of street boys.”75 In Rostov-na-Donu it was said that “nowhere in Russia, except in Odessa, are there as many vagabonds, pimps, and pickpockets.… Robbery and violence are normal occurrences there.” The Moscow press spoke of nightly assaults and the need to pack a revolver on the back streets of the unruly cities of the south. Kharkiv’s press called these tales “a bit exaggerated, but not altogether false.” The paper blamed poor housing, homelessness, and the abusive treatment of children as causes.76
Arrests for petty crimes in Kiev more than doubled from 3,583 in 1902 to 8,237 in 1904. In 1904, of the 8,237 arrested, 2,114 were adult men, 742 were adult women, 1,298 were boys, and 101 were girls. The large number of arrested boys seems to reinforce the popular view that cities were raising a new generation of young criminals. The great majority of arrests (65 percent) were for theft, and many others were for vagrancy and loitering. That only 702 (9 percent) of these arrests came during the fall may indicate that some of the city’s underclass returned to the villages to help with the harvest. Also, religious pilgrims were common targets, and their numbers declined in the fall. On the other hand more than half of the 327 robberies were committed during the fall.77
There are many possible explanations for the rising number of arrests. Population continued to grow; the number of police may have increased; data collection may have improved; or officials simply may have cracked down. In her study of St. Petersburg, Joan Neuberger suggests that “hooliganism arose and flourished, so to speak, as part of the process of class self-identification and self-assertion that was taking place at the turn of the twentieth century in connection with rapid urbanization, industrialization, and the spread of education.” The growing problem of hooliganism, especially when the targets were people or property in the more affluent central neighborhoods, may have been an expression of defiance, a challenge to “the balance of power on the streets” by an increasingly assertive lower class.78 Kiev’s journalist-memoirist Iaron reflected the popular view that the streets had become increasingly unsafe, contending in 1910 that violent crime, shocking in the 1880s, had become commonplace. “You live from day to day. You really don’t live, you vegetate. You take a breath and thank God.”79
Most of the victims of street crime were themselves residents of the poorer outlying districts where police were few and far between, such as Kiev’s Shuliavka and Solomenka and Kharkiv’s Cold Hills. Like other large cities, Kiev provided cover and anonymity for criminals. Thieves hid stolen goods in flats called passazhy (the same word used to denote the long shopping arcades). Individual clubs and taverns, each with its own dezhurnyi, or lookout, acquired reputations for harboring specific types of criminals and specific goods. In the outskirts theft was said to be “so common, it’s not even reported, particularly since you know what will happen to you if you do report it.” Often located near the railway stations where large crowds provided more victims and cover, these areas were said to be dangerous even by day; at night residents went out only if necessary, and then in groups. Police estimated that half of Kharkiv’s petty criminals lived in Cold Hills. Protection money, long a reality for Jews, became a necessity for many shopkeepers. Like the city, crime itself had become anonymous. “In the past the lives and the property of the peaceful Cold Hills residents had been considered inviolable. Such was the thieves’ tradition. But in recent years everyone has become fair game, especially the small shopkeepers who are routinely extorted and pay for protection or risk the destruction of their shops.”80
Thus, while strolling continued to be popular, its time and place became more dependent on lighting and police presence. Strolling had always been a group activity, a means of displaying oneself and interacting with one’s peers and members of the opposite sex. Growing concern for personal safety ensured that it would remain a group activity.
STROLLING PROFESSIONALLY IN KIEV
In 1856 a special committee was set up to try to curb the spread of syphilis in Kiev. That year 106 women were known to be prostitutes (in a city of at least 50,000 inhabitants). The 1874 census listed 403 registered prostitutes (396 of whom were women), but this figure taps only those who might be called openly professional.81 As was true all over Europe, many others survived unofficially as prostitutes. St. Petersburg, with 1,400,000 people at the turn of the twentieth century, had 3,000 registered prostitutes, and perhaps up to 50,000 unregistered. In 1907 Berlin was said to have 50,000 prostitutes, of whom only 4,000 were registered.82
